In 2013, Ministers of Health from the Pacific island countries (PICs) set an ambitious goal of a Tobacco Free Pacific by 2025. While the PICs have made great progress in tobacco control recently, including adopting tax increases, establishing smoke-free spaces, enacting packaging and labelling laws, and establishing regulations for licensing, creating a Tobacco Free Pacific by 2025 will be tough.

On 5 October 2015 the world’s largest trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), was signed. It includes 12 countries and applies to roughly 40 percent of the world’s economy. Notably, sections that limit governments’ powers to regulate products have been specifically exempted in the case of tobacco as a result of intense lobbying by civil society*.

A court in the Netherlands has denied a civil society suit against the government for its contacts with the tobacco industry, but the action produced a new policy that lays out rules for future interactions.